Heavy Harpsichords

As if to provide a immediate rejoinder to my previous post, I went to a harpsichord recital last night, given by a friend in the department. It was lovely. The standard warhorses of the harpsichord were brought out--Scarlatti, Couperin, Bach--plus a Haydn sonata. I usually think of the Haydn keyboard sonatas as being for the piano, but it actually worked quite well. Especially when he used the lute stop for the minuet, a nifty little trick you definitely can't do on the piano! The concluding Scarlatti sonatas were especially amazing. Luckily I was sitting with a good view of the keyboard, because some of the leaps he was making were astounding. I'm so impressed that my friend has been able to keep up his playing, despite the time constraints of being a graduate student, and despite the fact that his teacher moved to Canada just as he entered our program. He takes lessons here and there with other faculty, but for the past few years he's mostly been working on his own.

Before and after, however, I helped move the two harpsichords--one a double manual French, the other a pretty little Italian--from the music building over to the central rotunda of the main library, where the concert was being given. Man, those are some heavy suckers.